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Drinking Coffee Elsewhere-Theme

Drinking Coffee Elsewhere is a story about denial. The character in the story is in denial about her mother’s death or about needing anyone in her life. The one friend in the story that she does begin to develop a relationship with is pushed away because she gets to close. She feels that by denying that she needs anyone in her life, that will make it true. So she goes through life, keeping to herself in a single dorm room, eating, and spending most of her time by herself. The main character in the story is Dina. She is an African American college student who is attending a prestigious university. Her character contributes to the theme in the sense that she has “denied” her heritage and upbringing by breaking the mold of what might have expected of her to accomplish as a young adult. While it is an inaccurate and ignorant stereotype to assume one is “selling out” or acting outside of their race for choosing to become educated and show an interest in learning, it is a stereotype that definitely exists. One of the places in the story that this is apparent is in her recollection of the trip to the grocery store. She recounts how unacceptable it was in her neighborhood to be seen with a book that one may be reading for simple pleasure as opposed obligation for school. She grew up in a poverty stricken neighborhood where going to a place like Yale was not something that happened to most of the youth brought up there. The theme of denial continues with her resistance to submit to her lesbianism. It’s very apparent that she has a deep seeded resentment of men that started with her father who treated her mother very poorly, and in her own words says, “My mother had died slowly. At the hospital, they'd said it was kidney failure, but I knew that, in the end, it was my father. He made her scared to live in her own home, until she was finally driven away from it in an ambulance.” Her disapproval of men in general also appears in the way that she speaks of her friend...

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...﻿Johnathan Sortino
Dr. Chaple
ENGL 1102-04
July 25, 2014
Segregation and Power
In analysis of DrinkingCoffeeElsewhere
Throughout life we learn about segregation of blacks in the fifties and sixties, but we never learn about the segregation of any other groups. Segregation supposedly ended with the end of The Civil Rights movement, but people refuse to look at segregation in their every day lives today. Look at the Greek system here at West Georgia, every member is considered Greek but each organization is separated and taught to dislike the others. We are segregated first into one big group separated from the rest of the school and then segregated within that group into each of our organizations. This is one reason how segregation is still present in the world today. Segregation is also visible between men and women, like in sports men and women are not allowed to play in the same leagues and have separate leagues for each gender. The main reason segregation exist is to separate the population so that someone or some group can control the others and gain power over them. Segregation is something that will be around forever and there is no changing it and segregation will always lead to power of a group. In “Brownies” and “Every Tongue Shall Confess” of ZZ Packer’s DrinkingCoffeeElsewhere by segregation symbolizes oppression or power.
In the story “Brownies” the girls of troop 909 are...

...Racism in DrinkingCoffeeElsewhere
In ZZ Packer’s book entitled DrinkingCoffeeElsewhere, we get to see how African Americans cope with their different situations dealing with family, friendship, religion, and the pursuit of prosperity in the world. Within the short story collection there is a story named after the title, DrinkingCoffeeElsewhere, where we get to see the pressures put on a young African American woman, Dina, that causes her to resort to near complete isolation of herself. Dina says at one point, “We spent the winter and some of the spring in my room- never hers- missing tests, listening to music, looking out my window to comment on people who wouldn’t have given us a second thought”(Packer 140). Dina feels the need to resort to separating herself from everybody else because she has a difficult time dealing with all of the negative pressures put onto her from the outside world, even from other African Americans. There are various moments in which she gets disregarded and bullied such that she is forced into living in her state of misery. Packer depicts racism frequently in DrinkingCoffeeElsewhere in order to illustrate the segregated, discriminatory, and negative pressures forced upon African Americans in society.
First, Dina grew up under unfortunate circumstances that force her...

...DrinkingCoffeeElsewhere
Analysis
1) Yes, she is having a crisis of identity, that crisis is that she is pretending to not like no one but the truth is that she is not sure if she is gay or straight. There is more than one identity of herself that she is struggling, as she said she like nobody but she mentioned she had a crush on the boy with that pair of nice shoes and now she is starting to love Heidi, she is hiding herself from people especially from the whites.
2) The orientation games a fitting beginning for the story because through the games, the author can show how she hates and not trusting other people. Also, the game that asking her what object she wanted to be shows her sophisticated mind, giving an insane impression of how she is to readers.
3) I think the author ends the story with the narrator imaging Heidi knocking on her door and saying open up because the narrator thinks that it is the time for her to put down all the hate and all the fakeness that she relied on these years, it is time for her to be happy and start to learn to love others. It seems that she felt she is too lonely or it is time for her to overcome the scars created from her mother’s death.
Making Connections
1) Basing on both of the story, love does not equal sex, but both of them are necessary for a good relationship. Using courting a monk as an example, the couple in the story had love each other in the earlier stage in the story, but as...

...Kevin Gable
8/30/10
Engl 1167
Communication
DrinkingCoffeeElsewhere is a very interesting story that brings up a number of thought-provoking issues in a relatively short format. Among these are questions of race, identity, and stereotyping. The narrator of the story is a young woman named Dina who feels lonely and confused in her new surroundings. As a poor, African American female at Yale (which the narrator portrays as a rich, male, and subtlety racist institution) she has difficulty adapting to the expectations of the university. From the very beginning, her differences set her apart from her classmates, until, from her point of view, she becomes a pariah, invisible and despised by the community. Of course, one must view these complaints with some skepticism. The narrator deliberately isolates herself with off-hand comments and antisocial behavior. She seems to take pride in her jarring attitude toward authority and friendliness. Only on rare occasions do we see her treated poorly by the other characters. While her behavior is rude and obnoxious, they seem to be welcoming and sincere in their attempts to reconcile her depression. It soon becomes apparent that Dina finds comfort in her intentional isolation. She takes some satisfaction from stereotyping others unfairly and irrationally, since stereotypes provide a simple and lazy detour around human interaction.
The narrator in Drinking...

...Imaginative Conversation
Why does ZZ Packer write her essay with mostly conversing through language? In the short story DrinkingCoffeeElsewhere, ZZ Packer consistently uses the art of conversation. She uses this type of language throughout her short story while either a group of people are talking or just man to man conversations.
First off this short story is about an African American woman named Dina and she just arrived at orientation at the University Yale. In class she quickly meets and makes a friend by the name of Heidi who was a Canadian. They made it very apparent to each other that Dina was a lesbian with their dirty conversation. Dina later goes to the psychiatrist Dr. Raeburn to talk about her parent where she quickly replies that her dad is “a dick” and her mom was alright. After the session with her psychiatrist Dina suddenly ran into Heidi again where they decide to go out and eat at Commons where they had tacos and had a lovely conversation with a man at the place. They signed for work at the Saybrook Dining Hall where they washed dishes. Dina then attends more sessions with Dr. Raeburn. A few days later when the dishwashers were closed down in the dining hall Dina and Heidi decided to take a couple of smokes on the milk crates. Dina was not a smoker but they were that day. Suddenly a conversation about taking a shower
Hoang, page 2
appears and Dina quickly tries to shut it down. Although she...

...“Travel is a Fool’s Paradise” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Traveling is a rite of passage for some younger people. Many consider these times rewarding to the psyche of a young adult, as experiences in other lands broaden their senses. College students embark on sabbaticals to spend time in the real world. Others temporarily replant themselves, to experience other places, cultures, and languages, and in doing so to find out more about themselves. And there are that select few who use relocation as a form of escape from their tumultuous lives, because as they say, “the grass is always greener…” Some never return home. Whatever your reason for these journeys, it should be understood that going outside one’s comfort zone can test your mettle, and good judgement and wit are crucial in surviving in a foreign land, where language, culture, and even racism are an issue. A few wrong steps and you may find yourself a few shingles short of a roof over your head. It is that last category of drifters who define “Geese,” where Dina and four other ex-patriots find themselves sharing a one room flat in Japan. These misfortunate individuals are escaping from themselves, and through misplaced pride, ill preparation, and execution find themselves on the brink of self-annihilation, finally regressing into their own futileness.
The story begins with Dina, a girl from a hardscrabble section of Baltimore with “boarded-up row houses the city had promised to renovate,” (210) relating to her...

...﻿Kaitlin Ricks
DrinkingCoffeeElsewhere
In the short story DrinkingCoffeeElsewhere, there are many themes that are seen within Dina, such as struggling with sexuality, fear of labeling, fear of facing reality, and fear of opening up to others.
The narrator, Dina is not clear about her sexuality. The story does not imply whether she is a lesbian or not. When she meets Heidi, their relationship grows, they become very close and spend days in Dina’s room together. They even sleep together in the same bed. Later in the story when Heidi comes out, that causes a drift between them. Heidi was the only person that she could relate to and now that she came out as a lesbian, it feels like she no longer has that bond with her. She also becomes defensive when Dr. Raeburn asks about any crushes she’s had. Later in the story, she accuses Dr. Raeburn of calling her gay.
The fear of facing reality is an important theme in the story. She lies about things so that she does not have to face the reality, which in some cases, are very painful for Dina. She is in denial about the death of her mother and having any type of crush when she was younger. It seems as though she lies in order to seem normal and people will not label her. All of her lying is a shield to keep her from having emotion toward the things that she has gone through. Also the fear of being labeled goes hand in...

...Coffees’ Reputation
Specific Purposes:
-To rebuild coffee’s reputation by informing the audience the benefits of drinkingcoffee, the essential element that makes coffee a healthy beverage, and the suggested consumption dosage to maintain optimal body condition.
Introduction:
Hook:
According to Statistics Canada, coffee is ranked as the second most frequently consumed beverage in Canada, and the first is water. (Statistics Canada)
There is a reason for more than 12 Tim Horton’s around Campus, in addition to plenty of other well-known coffee brands.
Obviously, we love coffee. But how much do we know about coffee?
Most people treat coffee as a guilty pleasure since it has a long history of being criticized for many health problems such as high blood pressure, anxiety, and some uncertain effects. Somehow, coffee’s flaw has been over-exaggerated while its benefits were usually overlooked.
So today, I would like to clarify the benefits of drinkingcoffee, explain the essential element that makes coffee a healthy beverage, and suggest the consumption dosage for optimal body condition.
Let’s start by introducing some unknown merits about coffee other than helping you power through the exam period.
Body
I. Coffee is beneficial for your brain and your body....